Will Biden backtrack on electric cars to chase Trump?
To please unions and manufacturers, the Biden administration could backtrack on electric cars, easing limits on exhaust emissions. Tesla, which only sells battery-powered vehicles, protests. All the details
The United States could review limits on car exhaust emissions to give companies more time to adapt to electric mobility: essentially meaning that American car manufacturers will have less incentive to produce battery-powered vehicles in the short term. The news – unofficial, but anticipated by the New York Times and the Washington Post – is a concession to the unions, but could have consequences on national decarbonisation plans: transport is in fact the leading American sector for emissions.
WILL THE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION SOFTEN EMISSIONS LIMITS?
The US press writes that it is likely that the Environmental Protection Agency, a government body, will soften the limits on exhaust emissions from vehicles, both cars and vans. The new rules are expected to be published in early spring, perhaps as early as March.
The Agency will therefore not force an increase in the production of electric vehicles in the coming years – the consequence of very stringent rules on emissions -, but will postpone this measure until after 2030.
WHAT THE UNIONS THINK ABOUT ELECTRIC CARS
President Joe Biden's administration has devoted much of its policy agenda to transforming America into a green industrial superpower. Now, however, given the November elections, it may have to mitigate this push for the energy transition and take more into account the needs of trade unions, a potential pool of votes.
The Detroit-based United Automobile Workers, once the undisputed center of the US auto industry, fears that the shift to electric mobility could prove harmful to workers, and particularly its members. On the one hand, in fact, electric vehicles contain fewer parts than those with internal combustion engines and therefore require less manpower; on the other hand, the production of electric models is moving towards Southern states (such as Kentucky and South Carolina), which are poorly unionized compared to Michigan and the rest of the Midwest.
When the Environmental Protection Agency proposed last April that electric vehicles would account for 67 percent of car and van registrations by 2032, the United Automobile Workers said it was suspending support for the campaign. Biden's re-election precisely because of "fears about the transition to electric vehicles".
WHAT TRUMP THINKS
Donald Trump, the probable candidate of the Republican Party in the presidential elections, is very critical of electric cars and has promised that he will eliminate the tax credits introduced by Biden with the Inflation Reduction Act , aimed at encouraging the spread of battery-powered cars produced in United States and North America.
WHAT CHANGES (LITTLE) FOR AMERICAN EMISSIONS
If the Biden administration's step backwards will please the unions and also the car manufacturers (who are generally behind on electric vehicles), it will instead displease environmentalist organizations attentive to climate issues.
However, the Washington Post and the New York Times wrote that even by postponing the recommendations on electric vehicles, the United States will still achieve roughly the same emissions reductions by 2055 as those envisaged under the original proposal.
HOW ELECTRIC CAR SALES ARE GOING
Meanwhile, sales of electric cars in the country are slowing down, although growing. The dominant company on the US market is Tesla (whose workers are not unionized); the traditional Detroit companies (which are instead unionized) are far behind: electric vehicles are worth just 4 percent of Ford's total sales and 3 percent of General Motors' sales.
Beyond the high price, part of the slowdown in sales is linked to the still limited availability of public charging infrastructure: even in California only 72.5 percent of public fast charging points in the San Francisco area were active at beginning of 2022.
The Alliance for Automotive Innovation – an industry association including General Motors, Volkswagen, Toyota and others – said the Environmental Protection Agency's original emissions limits were too ambitious and could result in 14 billion dollar penalties for those manufacturers who fail to comply with them.
Tesla, by contrast, is pushing the agency to enforce those limits, which would give electric vehicles a 67 percent market share by 2032, up from 7.6 percent in 2023. Last year, 1,000,000 electric vehicles were sold. 2 million electric vehicles in the United States, a record made possible also thanks to tax credits of up to 7,500 dollars (but only eighteen models can access the full incentive).
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/smartcity/stati-uniti-revisione-limiti-emissioni-auto-elettriche/ on Mon, 19 Feb 2024 10:51:36 +0000.